This invention relates to methods of connecting two or more devices to one another, and particularly to such methods that allow two or more devices, including mobile devices, to be able to share data and functionality in a customisable manner.
It is known to connect one device to another such that one of the devices (sometimes known as a “Host device”) is able to control functionality such as a display, disk storage and the data stored on the disk, audio output and other resources, that are available on the other device (sometimes known as a “Peripheral device”) such that the Peripheral device is under the control of the Host device in the same way as a mouse, display, keyboard etc. For example, a user might connect his or her smartphone to his or her laptop in order to charge the phone, upload photographs to the laptop, copy audio files to the phone and so on. In this situation the laptop is used as the Host device as it is using the smartphone as an external hard drive with a battery. The connection between the devices may be wired, using any general-purpose or use-specific wired method including USB, HDMI, Ethernet or any other appropriate method or may be wireless, using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or any other appropriate wireless method or may be via any wired or wireless network connection, including the Internet.
When two devices are connected to one another there has generally been no way for the user to select which one should act as the Host device; this selection has been made automatically by the devices based on assumptions regarding the devices, so that, generally, the device most similar to a conventional desktop computer, is selected as the Host device, regardless of the resources available on the two devices in question. This may not be desirable. For example, a user may connect his or her laptop to his or her smartphone when the laptop has a very low battery level but the phone has a very high battery level. Nonetheless, the laptop and the smartphone will be connected with the laptop as the Host device and the smartphone as the Peripheral device and the laptop will attempt to charge the phone because that is the common standard default behaviour.
When two devices are connected, the Peripheral device is normally treated as having limited functionality. The Host device may use any internal display on the Peripheral device as an extended display and is may also access any internal hard drive, as mentioned above, but the Peripheral device's processing power is not normally used. This means that the Peripheral device's resources are not being used to their full potential.
The default settings for Host and Peripheral devices are also often set at a basic level in that there is no adjustment in behaviour for different resources: if one device is acting as the Host device it is acting as the Host device with regard to all functionality, whether or not this is desirable.
The Host device is able to access resources on the Peripheral device but there is usually no way for the Peripheral device to access resources on the Host device. To continue the example of the user who connects his or her laptop to his or her smartphone, all functionality is controlled from the laptop. Even if the smartphone's interface is still useable—it may only be showing an informative screen, for example—it will not be possible for the user to access any resources on the laptop from the smartphone. For example, he or she will not be able to browse the laptop's hard drive from the smartphone.
It is also the case that where two devices are connected to one another one will usually be treated as the Host device and the other as the Peripheral device. There is usually no way for the two devices to use one another's resources equally except under the limited circumstances of two computers connected via a network, which under some circumstances may be able to access one another's data. A connection in which devices are able to share resources is often known as a Peer-to-Peer connection.
Furthermore, there is also usually no way to limit access to a device's resources; if one device is connected to another, the Host device will be able to access the Peripheral device's functionality, such as hard disk storage, whether or not this is desirable for the user. For example, if a user lends his or her tablet computer to a friend to use as an extended display for a desktop computer, he or she may not want his or her friend to be able to access the hard disk of the tablet computer. However, with known systems, this would be the automatic normal behaviour of the system.
The present invention therefore seeks to overcome or at least ameliorate one or more of the above-mentioned problems.